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Jaal

aka The Net 1952 165’ b&w Hindi d/s Guru Dutt pc Filmarts dial M.A. Latif lyr Sahir Ludhianvi c V.K. Murthy m S.D. Burman lp Dev Anand, Geeta Bali, Ram Singh, Purnima, K.N. Singh, Krishna Kumari, Johnny Walker, Rashid Khan, Raj Khosla, Raj Matwala

Dutt’s classic follow-up to Baazi (1951) with the same stars. Set in a small Indian enclave still under foreign control (presumably Portuguese Goa), Tony (Anand) is an unscrupulous gold smuggler who seduces the local belle Maria (Bali) and makes her his accomplice. Lisa (Purnima), who was Tony’s companion until the police got on her track, tries to warn him. In the end, when Tony is hunted down by the police, Maria stops the shootout and persuades him to go to jail, promising to wait for him. Maria’s blind brother Carlo (K.N. Singh) and her fiance Simon (R. Singh) are the other important characters in the story. The film’s most remarkable scenes, apart from its wonderfully suspenseful opening on the waterfront, include a very stylish seduction scene as Tony lures Maria to the beach with his song Yeh raat yeh chandni phir kahan (sung by Hemanta Mukherjee), and she ends up caught, literally, in his net. The rural Goan fishing community is transformed into a kind of frontier town to provide the setting for the morality tale of sex and religion, summarised in a strangely comic scene with masked dancers at a village fete. Dutt uses the sound of waves as a leitmotif and his renowned crane shots (cf. Pyaasa, 1957; Kaagaz Ke Phool, 1959) are already in evidence.

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